by By Moses Peet
Most people on social media have seen a video generated from Sora AI by now, they’re spreading all over social media and I have seen them posted on both Instagram and TikTok. The app is completely blowing up, in one week the app had over one million downloads. I recently got the app a week ago, although in order to get access you must have a code. I found a code online pretty fast so it is pretty accessible. The app looks and works very similar to apps like TikTok, when you open the app there is a for you page and you can create videos under your account. You can scan your face in to create videos of yourself, or you can create videos of certain celebrities who have given permission. Or you can even appear/make “cameos”, which are videos that your friends make of you, or of the both of you together.
Text To Video Generation
The app is extremely easy to use, you simply describe what video you want, and then Sora will give you a 10 second clip within a couple of minutes. You can create a scene completely from scratch, or you can upload an image or video to change. I think that this will lead to our social media feeds looking very different. Anybody can generate this type of content, even if they have no prior experience. It’s really shocking how real some of the videos can look, the line between AI and reality and becoming more blurred. It is very easy to mistake a Sora AI video to real life, there are Sora watermarks on every video, but someone who doesn’t know could easily be confused. Videos being marked as AI is more important than ever in my opinion.
Example Generated By Me
This is the prompt I put into the Sora generator: “Create a video of myself introducing me to my social media strategy class taught by professor Kelli at the University of Oregon. Talk about the blog post I am drafting about Sora AI and artificial generative videos.” Here is the video it gave me:
Although you can definitely tell that this video is AI generated, it’s wild to think about how easy and fast I put this together. If I were to show this video to my grandma, I honestly think she would watch a few times before realizing that something is off. So far I have mostly just used the app to create funny videos of my friends and I. There are rules and guidelines on the app making it so that you can only generate allowed content. It doesn’t let you do anything remotely violent, for example I tried to create a video of myself riding my skateboard into the river in Portland and It said the video went against community guidelines.
Is It Safe?
With the way that Sora AI is set up right now, it is totally a fun and safe app. I can understand the worry though, this type of technology in the hands of people with bad intentions could be really bad. It would be easy to make a fake video of someone doing something illegal or saying something they didn’t really say. OpenAI (The parent company of Sora and ChatGPT) must keep strict regulations on the use of this. I also could see potential danger for this technology being used for fake news, which we have already seen on the presidents social media account. The president just recently posted a video to his Truth Social account of himself dumping feises from a jet labeled “King Trump” on top of No Kings day protesters. It’s easy to laugh at, but also so unbelievably concerning coming from the most powerful person in our country.
My Thoughts
As someone who has dedicated their life to filming and editing videos/photos, it is definitely scary seeing videos being created this easily. As much fun as it is to make videos of my friends doing unreal things, I think the negatives of AI video generation outweigh the positives. AI should be used in a way so that humans can focus more on the the creating. AI can make reports, gather analytics, and make the business part more efficient. I say leave the visual content to humans.
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Hi Moses! I love how you really captured how powerful Sora AI is becoming in your blog post! Your example video is pretty scary, in the sense of how realistic and easy it was for you to make it. I also really like how you make your own example of the AI technology rather than finding an example online. Overall, I agree with your takeaway, that AI can make creative work easier, but preserving the human touch in visual storytelling is what keeps art meaningful.
Hello Moses Peet. I love the example you put from Sora, and I agree, it is a fun app and interface now, but it has potential to be dangerous. I have seen some instances of Sora being used for negative affect, and I think that will just keep getting worse. The negative definitely outweighs the positives.
Hi Moses! Your blog was such an interesting read! I’m fairly out of the loop when it comes to AI generated videos, but I really enjoyed how you shared your experience and thoughts on using Sora AI. It’s important to consider the impact of AI created content online, and it’s reassuring to know there are strict guidelines in place. Your perspective provides valuable insight into this powerful technology.